Senate Democrats push to end tax breaks for big oil companies to cut deficit

From WaPo:

Senate Democrats unveiled a plan Tuesday to save $21 billion over the next decade by eliminating tax breaks for the nation’s five biggest oil companies, a move designed to counter Republican demands to control the soaring national debt without new taxes.

That's it? This is the big plan? $2.1 billion a year works out to about .oooo nothing % of the deficit or the budget and the only real effect this will have is to raise energy prices and encourage more oil imports.

Look, the Democrats have no interest in reducing the deficit if it means reducing the power and money they steal from private citizens. They have no interest in reducing gas prices since that reduces mobility and makes you easier to control. They have no interest in reducing the inflation they have caused or increasing private sector employment since a robust private sector and a financially independent populace is direct threat to these two bit tyrants and their desire to rule.

WSJ: Dissecting the liberal smears of Paul Ryan’s budget

• Deficits and debt. Perhaps the most bizarre complaint is that Mr. Ryan's blueprint would worsen the U.S. fiscal imbalance compared to current law. So the House Budget Chairman has proposed supposedly hideous cuts to popular entitlements at great political risk for . . . the fun of it?...

• Medicare "cuts." The Mediscare machinery is grinding into gear, and the same people who say Mr. Ryan is imposing too much pain on seniors by requiring them to pay a larger portion of their health costs also claim that he's a coward for exempting everyone in or near retirement. In other words, the soup is terrible and the portions are too small...

Full Article

IRS Wants to be World Tax Cop

Watch the video and think about the larger issues beyond the trillions in capital that would leave this country because the IRS wants to use extra legal means to report foreign, non resident investment income to foreign governments. Besides the breathtaking economic stupidity, one has to ask why the executive branch wants to do this. In Europe and elsewhere, statist high tax governments and their cheerleaders have carping for years about 'tax competition"

They don't like the fact that certain countries have more favorable tax structures that attract capital away from high tax and/or corrupt countries, making it harder to impose a worldwide financial regime.

Eat The Rich

An old chestnut of economic idiocy is being revived by the liberal fascists now that they are in power again. From Joel Hirschorn:

"Here is the solution that the overwhelming majority of Americans should demand: A law should be immediately passed that imposes a new special federal income tax of 99 percent on all income in excess of $500,000 annually for single taxpayers and $1 million for couples, starting for 2008 income. Call it a greed tax. Call it justice. Call it getting even for too many years of uncontrolled greed that has given the nation nothing but economic injustice and inequality, and given capitalism a very bad name. Call it a sensible way to raise federal revenues to help offset the cancerous national debt."

I've heard this proposal in various forms countless times over the years and it's always couched as means of "justice" and revenge as it is now. Never do proponents of this idea ever ask "Then what?

Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) has also jumped on the bandwagon with a bill that would limit executive pay to $400,000 per year for companies receiving bailout money.

The fact that these proposals have almost zero chance of becoming law is beside the point. It is illustrative of the immaturity, short sightedness and simpleminded thinking of the left.

What will these geniuses do when these people decide to work and invest overseas and take their talents and money with them? High taxes and heavy handed regulation is already causing people and businesses to flee California, Michigan, New York and other socialist utopias. Billions of corporate profits are already in exile overseas to avoid one of the highest federal business tax structures in the world.

The left never thinks of these things because their ideas are so high minded that to them, pointing out reality is just divisive and proof of greedy counterrevolutionary thinking.

Report: Over 8 in 10 corporations have tax havens

Since the US (combined with state taxes) has the highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world, I don't know why anyone is surprised by this:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Eighty-three of the nation's 100 largest corporations, including Citigroup, Bank of America and News Corp. (NWSA), had subsidiaries in offshore tax havens in 2007, and some of the companies received federal bailout funding, a government watchdog said Friday.

But that wont stop liberal fascists from demagoguing an issue they created. They're solution is to make the US even more unattractive to business and capital.

"Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who requested the report, have pushed for tougher laws to fight offshore tax havens around the globe. Levin, who leads the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, has estimated abusive tax havens and offshore accounts cost the U.S. government at least $100 billion a year in lost taxes. "I think we should take action to shut down these tax dodgers and we will be introducing legislation to do just that," Dorgan said."

Does he mean he wants to shut down the companies themselves? I'll just chalk that statement up to the usual Democrat incoherence and take him to mean the shelters themselves. These economic morons also seem to have a problem distinguishing between legal tax avoidance and illegal evasion.

Several major corporations have announced plans to leave Bermuda, a leading offshore business center, amid the global financial crisis and fears of tighter tax rules. Tyco Electronics Ltd., which makes electronic components, and Foster Wheeler Ltd., an engineering and construction company, are reincorporating in Switzerland - which has a tax treaty with the U.S. - for tax and other reasons. Covidien Ltd., a health care products company, is heading to Ireland.

Gee, what a surprise. But Democrats think it's the victims fault for not standing still while they're plundered by these crooks.

"Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low aspossible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays thetreasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes.Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinisterin so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyonedoes it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes anypublic duty to pay more than the law demands."

- Judge Learned Hand(1872-1961), Judge, U. S. Court of Appeals

There's No Free Lunch, Stupid

The economic ignorance of the general public is one of the most dangerous threats to freedom today. A majority of Americans actually believe the fairy tales of the Left and unwittingly voted for their own economic destruction.

Jamie Whyte at the London Times gives an excellent explanation of the real costs of a heavy handed government:

..."To an economic child, taxing companies sounds like an obviously good idea. Who cares about companies? Can a company be hungry, homeless, uneducated? Will you put the interests of these wealthy inhuman entities ahead of real, flesh and blood people, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet?

But companies cannot be rich or poor; only the people who own them or work for them can be. Nor can the cost of taxation fall on a company; it must ultimately fall on the company's owners, employees or customers. Before you can tell whether corporate tax is a good idea, you need to understand who bears the cost and how it affects their behaviour. Once you do, it turns out that taxing companies is a bad idea.

Research shows that the cost of corporate tax falls more or less evenly across a company's shareholders (in lower dividends), employees (in lower wages) and customers (in higher prices). So, in terms of the “social justice” so beloved of the Left, corporate tax is no better than a combination of income and sales taxes.

But, in terms of efficiency, it is worse. Research also shows that corporate tax has a greater “deadweight cost” than both income and sales taxes, because it discourages the allocation of resources to productive uses - in other words, it discourages investment.

Markets are another, increasingly popular, fantastical bearer of costs. The current financial crisis, we are told, was caused by “unfettered markets”. Fetter them! Alas, you cannot fetter a market. Markets are nothing but places (sometimes “virtual” places) where people enter into voluntary transactions. You can fetter a market only by fettering those who participate in it. You must dictate the terms on which they may do business with each other or conditions they must meet to participate in the market.

Market fetterists claim their shackles protect the vulnerable. That sounds plausible only if you ignore the effects on individual market participants. Complying with regulations imposes a fixed cost on businesses. It thus disadvantages small firms, creates a barrier to market entry and stifles the competition that delivers the best deal for consumers. In short, it shafts the little guy. That is why large incumbent firms lobby politicians to increase market regulation...

... When it comes to bearing costs, there are no companies or markets or other aggregations of people. Costs are always borne by individuals. That is what Margaret Thatcher meant when she denied the existence of society: “They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people.”...

Barney Just Can't Shut His Mouth

It's not enough that Barney Frank is guilty of criminal neglect and malfeasance in the near economic meltdown of the country. Now this shameless bastard is rubbing his hands over the prospect of taxing some more "rich" people; the definition of which gets lower and lower since there aren't enough truly rich people in the world to satisfy the appetites of power mad jerk-offs like Frank.

And just because I think it's funny, here's Lil O'Reilly's interview with Barney.

BTW - What's with you dumbasses in Massachusetts anyway? This is who you send to congress?

How to Bribe a Country

Obama is telling us that sending checks to the 40% of tax filers who pay no taxes is a cut. In reality it's impossible to cut a bill below zero without calling it a gift of other's money. Obama knows this and it's part of a long Democrat tradition of buying votes through the Treasury.

Michael Medved explains in this column:

"...As Amity Shlaes shows in her necessary new book “The Forgotten Man,” FDR failed miserably at turning around the US economy (the Depression lingered until the beginning of World War II) but succeeded brilliantly in achieving long-term power for the Democratic Party. The innumerable government programs launched by the New Deal may have done nothing to advance the overall interests of the nation of the economic system, but they performed magnificently at creating dependent interest groups who voted reliably Democratic for decades. If the government hands out goodies to various constituencies, those segments of the population will continue to support the idea of enriching themselves with other people’s money..."

Corporations Avoid High U.S. Taxes

WASHINGTON (AP) - Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.
The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Well that's what happens when you have the highest corporate tax rate (35%) in the industrialized world other than Japan. Tack on state taxes and it's remarkable that anyone incorporates here.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

No, what's shameful is that you two idiots are in any position of power. Does it ever occur to you that corporations wouldn't try so hard to avoid taxes if they were more reasonable? Since individuals end up paying all taxes at the end of the day and are ultimately the ones who own and work for corporations, they really mean that it's shameful that you aren't paying more.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.
"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

That's the most popular tax avoidance strategy there is, especially for the small businesses that employ 70% of the workforce. No doubt Levin and Dorgan will try to kill some businesses and jobs by targeting them.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices - amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.
"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.

There's that "fair share" nonsense again. Why doesn't the government pay back its fair share and stop wasting our money! It's no coincidence that the only entity with a monopoly on the use of force to get its way, is the only one that will never consider doing with less.

"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." George Washington